Saying the changes to the district lines on the map will require substantial changes in court operations, the Illinois Supreme Court has paused, indefinitely, the work of redistricting Illinois’ appellate court system for the first time since the 1960s.
On June 7, the state high court issued an order, instructing all lawyers to continue filing their appeals in the state’s five appellate courts, following the appellate district lines that existed on June 3.
On that date, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed his name to a new Illinois appellate court district map.
The new map had been approved by the Democratic supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly a few days earlier. The judicial district remap – the first of its kind had drawn howls of protest and criticism from Republicans and others, who asserted the redistricting was a nakedly partisan power grab, intended for little reason other than to preserve a Democratic majority on the state’s high court.
Democrats who pushed through the judicial redistricting said the changes were needed to better balance Illinois’ population among the five state Supreme Court districts.
Critics, however, noted the judicial redistricting effort arrived in public weeks after voters in the state’s Third Appellate District, in central Illinois, refused to send Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride, a Democrat, back to the high court.
While the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Justice Robert Carter, a Democrat, to replace Kilbride, Carter vowed to not seek election to the high court, and retire when his term expires.
Since the former Third District has titled heavily Republican in recent years, critics of the redistricting say the changes to the state’s judicial district lines came in an attempt to keep Republicans from claiming a 4-3 edge on the Illinois Supreme Court, when voters select a new justice to permanently replace Kilbride in 2022.
A shift in favor of the Republicans could produce big changes in how state laws and the state constitution are interpreted.
The Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court in recent years, for instance, has shot down attempts to reform the state’s pension system, and denied voters the chance to vote on a new constitutional amendment stripping power from state lawmakers to gerrymander the state’s legislative districts to their partisan advantage.
The state Supreme Court also has issued directives and orders that have helped Gov. JB Pritzker thwart court challenges to the broad, sweeping emergency powers he has wielded for over a year in the name of slowing the spread of COVID-19, even as other states have declared their governors acted illegally to continue issuing emergency orders over that same span without the approval of their state legislatures.
However, the new map makes any partisan shift much less likely.
Cook County would continue to select three justices to the court, as the county did before under the state constitution, as the First Appellate District.
And all other districts were redrawn, with the expected effect of watering down Republican advantages downstate, particularly in northern and central Illinois.
However, while Democratic lawmakers and Pritzker, also a Democrat, are tasked by the state constitution with the job of drawing the judicial district lines, the Illinois Supreme Court exercised its authority in how the rollout of the new districts would be implemented.
The law was written to take effect immediately.
However, in its June 7 order, the state Supreme Court directed attorneys to continue acting as if the old district lines, which had been in place since 1964, were still in place.
The court said the delay was needed to allow the appellate courts to adjust to the changes. In the order, the court noted the need to update e-filing and case management systems; to redistribute staff and resources among the various districts; and to complete “training of judicial stakeholders and education of the public and members of the bar,” before allowing the changes to take practical effect.
The order was issued without an expiration date. It will need to be undone by a future order of the court.